Monday, September 29, 2014

The Governor’s Race And The Correlation Of Forces

Most commentators in Connecticut seem to trust the
Quinnipiac Poll. The latest Q poll shows Republican gubernatorial challenger
Tom Foley leading Governor Dannel Malloy by about six percentage points. The
same poll shows Independent gubernatorial challenger Joe Visconti capturing
about seven percent of the vote, and that seven percent represents the ants in
the pants of Foley supporters who point out that, during the last gubernatorial
go-around, Mr. Foley lost to Mr. Malloy by a very thin margin. The Q poll also
points out that Mr. Visconti appears to be drawing equally from Republicans and
Democrats, so that his effect on the general election would appear to be a
wash.

Still, Republicans are nervous, and Democrats are pleased
that Mr. Visconti – unlike Jon Pelto, a Democratic Independent who earlier
withdrew from the gubernatorial race – is still stubbornly plugging along. Mr.
Visconti’s position on taxes and education is indistinguishable from that of
Mr. Pelto, whose position on taxes is indistinguishable from that of Leon Trotsky.
Both Mr. Pelto and Mr. Visconti see an increase in taxes as inevitable. Mr.
Pelto would hammer the rich in Connecticut by making the state income tax more
progressive. There are a number of resurgent Republican conservatives in Connecticut
who believe that Mr. Pelto is exactly what the doctor ordered for Connecticut’s
billionaires, many of whom continue to toss campaign contributions in the
direction of progressives determined to use the contributions to purchase the
rope with which they will hang the dupable contributors.

Mr. Pelto and conservative Republicans in Connecticut both
oppose Common Core for different reasons. Conservatives dislike Common Core –
or, as some of them call it, Common Gore – because it is a federally imposed
standard that violates the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that
educational decisions should be made by the smallest political unit affected by
political decisions: Towns, rather than state and federal governments, should
decide how best to shape public and private schools. Mr. Pelto dislikes Common
Core because he perceives enforced national standards as a threat to hegemonic
teacher unions. Mr. Pelto’s venom tap was turned on by Mr. Malloy, who sneered
that, because of tenure, teachers only had to “show up on the job” to continue
to miseducate urban school children. Mr. Malloy and other Common Core adepts
would change all that once national standards had been put in place. Mr. Malloy
since has had second thoughts.

The correlation of political forces in Connecticut, little
understood by Connecticut’s media, has not changed since 1991 when former
maverick Governor Lowell Weicker festooned the state with an income tax. It was
the fashion in Connecticut before and after the age of Weicker to insist that Connecticut,
a small but rich state, had no spending problem; rather, Connecticut had a
revenue problem that became apparent whenever red ink appeared in its budgets.
Any deficit could be discharged by a sufficient increase in revenues. Mr. Pelto
clings to the same notion today. So do other progressives -- including Mr.
Malloy, however much he insists that he has no plans to increase taxes -- so do
most political writers in the state.

Since 1991, Connecticut’s forward progress has been thwarted
by progressives who now man all the political high ground in the state.
Progressives run the governor’s office, all the Constitutional offices in Connecticut,
the entire U.S. Congressional Delegation, both Houses of Connecticut’s General
Assembly, and they have captured all these office from moderate Republicans who
had never effectively challenged Democrats on social issues. Democratic
moderates also have disappeared. For this reason, any effective challenge to
Democratic political hegemony in Connecticut must come from right of center
Republicans who in the past have been quietly strangled in their cribs by left
of center forces.

There is an additional problem. In the absence of strong state political
parties, which have been weakened for many years by campaign finance reform,
state political campaigns have been “other directed” by professional armies of
political architects that provide strategy and laundered money to
candidates. In the new political
dispensation, every candidate is his own political party, multiple dog tails
wagging the Democratic or Republican Party apparatus. In such circumstances,
political campaigns become detached from political practices, and a measure of
deceit is accepted that not so long ago would have sunk duplicitous campaigns.

Given the level of duplicity in political campaigns, saying
what you mean and then doing what you say itself becomes a revolutionary act
that cannot be tolerated by incumbents who have become practiced in the fine
art of insincerity. This crooked politicking alone accounts for the inattention
of voters who hunger for authenticity; they are unwilling to sanction with
their votes the obvious duplicity of shamelessly duplicitous politicians.